<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>shatter by MercuryPoisoning</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28281969">shatter</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryPoisoning/pseuds/MercuryPoisoning'>MercuryPoisoning</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>RWBY</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, I regret everything, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Suicidal Thoughts, Yang Xiao Long Angst, Yang Xiao Long Needs a Hug, Yangst, but also i don't, haha - Freeform, literally just angst</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 22:54:28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,167</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28281969</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryPoisoning/pseuds/MercuryPoisoning</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes it's a little too dark at night, but Blake still tries to put everything back together.<br/>-<br/>TW: suicidal content. Please be safe.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Blake Belladonna/Yang Xiao Long</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>71</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>bumbleby snapshots</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>shatter</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">Blake didn’t see it coming at all. Not at all - not in her darkest dreams, longest nights, bleakest moods - she never imagined it would come to this, so it’s anyone’s guess why she feels no surprise at all.</p><p class="p1">There is no shock. No sharp intake of breath. There is only Yang standing silhouetted by the window, bathed in the ghostly light of a broken moon, Ember Celica brandished on one wrist. Hovering somewhere near her temple.</p><p class="p1">Blake’s bare feet don’t make any noise when she gets out of bed and crosses the room, but the rustling of the bedsheets gives her away. Yang’s arm lowers to her side. She doesn’t turn around.</p><p class="p1">“Hey,” Blake whispers, coming to stand beside her. “Come back to bed, Yang.”</p><p class="p1">Yang doesn’t move, doesn’t acknowledge - Blake reaches down and wraps a hand around the weapon, her fingers latching onto the cold metal with the strength of an old, old desperation. It is cocked and warm with power. Blake studies her partner’s face, the sharp outline of her profile in the moonlight; her eyes are glittering, purple, reflecting the reflections in the window pane. She looks like she’s been crying.</p><p class="p1">“Yang,” Blake whispers again. Half-hoping. “Please talk to me. What are you doing?”</p><p class="p1">At last she moves, turning her head slowly to meet Blake’s gaze. She sees them then, the silvery tear-tracks that have dried across Yang’s flushed cheeks, the slight dampness in the golden hair framing her face.</p><p class="p1">“Hi, Blake,” Yang rasps, and she tries to smile but her eyes are defeated.</p><p class="p1">“Why are you crying?” Blake asks, even though she knows the answer - knows all the possible answers, to be exact; as well as where they came from, how they were most likely triggered, and where they’ll lead. She knows these things better than Yang herself, and still she asks, because sometimes that’s all you can do to fill the screaming quiet and the aching darkness and the patience of the weapon on Yang’s wrist.</p><p class="p1">“I - ” Yang starts, and then her breath hitches, and she re-focuses her gaze out the window. She tries to hide it. Blake can see the quiver of her lower lip.</p><p class="p1">“Please come back to bed, Yang.” And it’s a plea for real this time. It’s a fragment of the tip of the broken moon.</p><p class="p1">“I - Blake. Wait.”</p><p class="p1">“I’m waiting.” She always is. She’ll wait until the moon falls if it means Yang will take off Ember Celica and go back to bed.</p><p class="p1">She waits, but Yang doesn’t have anything to add - Blake detects the tiny tremors running across her shoulders, and hugs her. She wraps her arms around Yang’s neck and buries her face against her shoulder, heedless of Yang’s unresponsiveness to her actions. She smells cold.</p><p class="p1">“Blake, I.”</p><p class="p1">“Tell me!” Blake’s voice is a little too angry. “Yang! Tell me what’s going on! You can tell me what it is - you know that, we know that, just tell me what you’re feeling and come to bed - “</p><p class="p1">“Okay. I’m coming,” Yang rasps, and her voice is a little too sad.</p><p class="p1">“Take it off,” Blake whispers, releasing her, and Yang does take it off. Ember Celica clatters to the floor at their feet and both women stare at it for a long, empty moment before they shuffle back to bed together.</p><p class="p1">The sheets are still warm, but Yang lies down on her back and makes no move to go under them. Distant lilac eyes stare up at the ceiling. Blake sighs - it’s late, or rather it’s early - and she’s so tired. She crawls into bed, pulls the sheets over both of them, and rolls onto her side to face Yang.</p><p class="p1">“Was it a bad dream?” Blake prompts, trying to fill up the silence with something, <em>anything</em> tangible.</p><p class="p1">Yang doesn’t seem to hear. She rolls over, locks eyes with Blake. There’s something in her eyes that knocks the wind out of Blake’s lungs.</p><p class="p1">“Why do I want to die?” Yang gasps out, her voice hoarse and her eyes overflowing and her face crumpling - and then she is crying - no, she is <em>sobbing</em>, the force of it threading deep into Blake’s bones, clutching sheets up around her face and curling in on herself like she might be able to squeeze this agony out of her body.</p><p class="p1">Blake feels lightheaded.</p><p class="p1">“I don’t get it, Blake.” The words jump out frantically around the heaving of her sobs. “I don’t want to die. I - I - I don’t <em>want to die</em>!”</p><p class="p1">Blake's body moves by itself. She wraps her limbs around Yang’s shuddering form, trying to cocoon her somehow, to shield her from everything and herself. Yang doesn’t resist, and Blake thinks that maybe that’s the silver lining of this mess, that Yang still trusts her even when Yang is not Yang at all.</p><p class="p1">“I don’t want to die,” she repeats. Her tears dampen Blake’s shirt.</p><p class="p1">“Then don’t,” Blake hisses fervently. “Live, Yang. You have to live.”</p><p class="p1">“But it - it’s so - it’s so hard, it’s too fucking hard - “</p><p class="p1">“Silly,” Blake murmurs. Why is she smiling at a time like this? “So what if it’s hard? When has that ever stopped you?”</p><p class="p1">Yang is sobbing and sobbing and shaking and shaking and Blake is squeezing and squeezing and then eventually Yang hiccups, “it stopped me just now,” and there it is, the confirmation. Laid out in words. But Blake, well, she knew it already - and maybe she <em>had</em> seen it coming after all.</p><p class="p1">“I <em>don’t</em> wanna die,” Yang blurts out again. “B-but sometimes I do and I don’t know why, I don’t know why, I don’t know why, I don’t know why - “</p><p class="p1">“Yang, stop,” Blake murmurs, cradling the golden head against her chest and shutting her eyes. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”</p><p class="p1">“It’s not,” Yang whispers after a long moment.</p><p class="p1">“We’ll make it there.”</p><p class="p1">“I don’t know how to make it okay, Blake - “ a fresh wave of tears rattles her frame and Blake squeezes. Yang cries. And then Blake cries, too, but quietly, and the tears run warm over her face and get absorbed by Yang’s hair.</p><p class="p1">“We’ll figure it out together,” Blake hisses, a fierce kind of grief flaming to life in the pit of her stomach. “We will. It will be okay. So live.” Blake’s belly is burning. “I need you to live, Yang, <em>please</em>.”</p><p class="p1">“O-okay,” Yang rasps after a while. A long shudder runs through her body and then her crying begins to recede, leaving hiccups and trembling shoulders like a shrinking wave leaves its creatures stranded on the beach. Blake hugs and hugs and hugs. Eventually, Yang hugs back.</p><p class="p1">“Sleep for now,” Blake murmurs.</p><p class="p1">“Okay,” Yang says again. “Sleep for now.”</p><p class="p1">Sleep they do, tangled up in one another, and the moon leaves the window eventually. On the floor, Ember Celica hums with the weight of its understanding. Blake’s dreams smell cold.</p><p class="p1">But morning comes, as it always does, and in the end it’s all they can do to weather the night and face the day.</p><p class="p1">Eventually, they will be okay.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Call me queen of writing tiny lesbian pain fics and finishing them ambiguously because all I care about is making the gays suffer. I am so sorry. I hope you cried. Bye bye :3</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>